Ashbery, John

Ashbery, John,

1927–, American poet, b. Rochester, N.Y., grad. Harvard (B.A., 1949), Columbia (M.A., 1951). Ashbery is among the most acclaimed contemporary American poets. During the 1960s and 70s he was one of the so-called New York school of poets, which also included Frank O'HaraO'Hara, Frank1926–66, American poet, b. Baltimore, grad. Harvard (B.A., 1950), Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor (M.A., 1951). His poetry is spontaneous, vernacular, witty, personal, and very much of its time and place—New York City, 1951–66......Click the link for more information., Kenneth KochKoch, Kenneth(Kenneth Jay Koch) , 1925–2002, American poet, novelist, and playwright, b. Cincinnati. After studying at Harvard and Columbia he was associated with the Artist's Theatre, Locus Solus.....Click the link for more information., and James Schuyler. Influenced early in his career by the method and music of John CageCage, John,1912–92, American composer, b. Los Angeles. A leading figure in the musical avant-garde from the late 1930s, he attended Pomona College and later studied with Arnold Schoenberg, Adolph Weiss, and Henry Cowell......Click the link for more information., Ashbery has called his writing technique "managed chance." His poems are experimental in style and syntax, strongly visual, and narrative, but typically complex and somewhat obscure. His collections include Some Trees (1956), The Tennis Court Oath (1962), Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, his most celebrated work (1975; Pulitzer Prize), Shadow Train (1981), A Wave (1984), April Galleons (1987), And the Stars Were Shining (1994), Chinese Whispers (2002), Where Shall I Wander (2005), Planisphere (2009), and Breezeway (2015). He also has written two book-length poems, Flow Chart (1991) and Girls on the Run (1999); three plays, The Compromise (1960), The Heroes (1960), and The Philosopher (1964); and coauthored a novel, A Nest of Ninnies (1969). Ashbery is an art critic as well, and edited the quarterly Art and Literature. Many of his art reviews and essays were collected in Reported Sightings (1989). He also has translated works by such French writers as Pierre Reverdy, Raymond Roussel, Max Jacob, and Arthur Rimbaud.

Ashbery, John (Lawrence)

(1927– ) poet, writer; born in Rochester, N.Y. He attended Harvard (B.A. 1949), Columbia University (M.A. 1951), lived in Paris (1955–65), and settled in New York City. He taught at Brooklyn College beginning in 1974, was a playwright and a literary and art critic, and was known for his visionary poetry, as in Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975).

The "prelude" also cites many of Kazin's contemporaries: Flannery O'Connor, "the greatest American Catholic writer"; Edmund Wilson, "our last Great Man of Letters"; Saul Bellow, John Ashbery, John Berryman.

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